Dear Laundry,
I know, I know. You think I haven’t noticed how you’ve been waiting seven whole days in that smelly basket, spilling over onto the floor so little boys trample you on their way to bedrooms, how you’re crumpled up in bathrooms and twisted across couches and even left in the cold car all night, how all you really want is someone to care.
I assure you, I’ve noticed. I wish I could say I’m sorry for not washing you sooner, like you wanted, but I’m not. Because I was playing, skipping through the city zoo and riding on a carousel, teaching kickball to my boys in a big field of green, making little dolls out of clothespins and yarn and fabric, and it was beautiful and invigorating and fun.
I just can’t say the same about you, Laundry.
[Tweet “I always notice you, Laundry. I just don’t like to acknowledge it.”]
Maybe I used to feel differently about you, back when Husband and I walked you to the laundromat and put you in three washers and sat holding hands while talking and writing songs and reading marriage books for the forty-five minutes it took you to wash, and then doing it again while we watched you tumble dry low for another forty-five. But you have gotten out of hand, Laundry. You have invaded where you were not wanted. You have rewarded my hours of care with next to nothing, trading scattered cotton smelling like feet for stacked cotton smelling like lavender and eucalyptus, and maybe I should be grateful for even that, but it’s just not enough anymore, because, well, someone needs to put you away, and that just seems like it’s asking a little too much. I don’t have that much to give you, Laundry.
I’m sorry you stay draped across the back of our couch for days on end (or maybe it’s weeks; I’ve lost count), only moving when little boys have run out of clean underwear and feel bothered enough about reusing their dirty drawers that they’ll come rifling in your avalanche. And then you’re not even neat stacks anymore. You’re like a laundry volcano, waiting for someone to turn a flip off the couch and scatter you everywhere, which will happen in about two more seconds. I’m sorry I’m not so great at finishing you. But I’m not really.
See, you’re just a little too needy. I have a LOT of needy people in my house, and I don’t really need more, but you, well. You must be done every single week, so many loads of you, or you start creeping into the places we don’t want you–like the baby’s bed (because twins have a fetish for clothes piles, especially when they’re smelly) and the boys’ bathroom (which has a floor I wouldn’t even wish upon my worst enemy, except maybe) and, yes, even the refrigerator (we have a few absent-minded ones in the bunch. “Where’d my soccer socks go?” “You mean the dirty ones you wore yesterday and the day before that?” “…” “Did you try the refrigerator?” “Why the refrigera–Oh. Yeah, here they are.”).
I’m just…
I’m just tired of you.
You steal so much valuable time, Laundry. You’re like a giant black hole, sucking those seconds and minutes and hours into an invisible time warp so I hardly know where my whole day has gone because of your intruding buzzer that, every half hour, screams, “Finish me.”
Finish yourself, Laundry.
[Tweet “I wish you would finish yourself, Laundry. I’d rather be playing. Make that sleeping.”]
As if all that weren’t enough, you’re never, ever actually done. That last load spills out of the dryer, and there are still the clothes we’re wearing today. Are you never satisfied? Is there never an end to your demands? Can I just be done for a second or three or fifty-million? You’re like one of my kids, and I know people say that after three it’s just “pull up another chair,” but that’s actually not true at all. It’s more like “Just pull up another adult,” because you suddenly realize that you’re way out of your league. Or maybe it’s more like “Just pull up another bottle,” because who really wants to help the parents who chose to have six kids? A bottle of Merlot, that’s who.
I need a break from you, Laundry. It’s not me, it’s you. I have more than enough people clinging to me. I have more than enough people stealing my time and space. I have more than enough people making a mess of things. I don’t need another, even if it’s just a pile of sweaty socks that smell like rotting skunks.
Besides, my little boys want to play cars, and I’m sorting you, dark and light and white and towels and blankets, eight loads a week. My little boys want to go on a nature walk, and I’m waiting for one-eighth of you to finish washing so I can put you in the dryer and start the next one-eighth of you before we leave. I just want to go to bed, and there you are, commandeering my sleeping space like an unwanted blanket.
You have some things to learn before we can move on, Laundry. Autonomy. Self-discipline. Moderation.
But I have a feeling you won’t even make an effort. So, with a great long sigh (it’s still going), I guess I’ll have to say that though I would like to say it’s finished, I know the truth of it. A mom’s relationship with laundry is never finished. So I’ll see you in our normal meeting place (all over the house) next Monday at 6 a.m. sharp. Don’t be late. As if you ever are.
Your resigned partner,
Me
